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ADDRESS, 



DELIVEKEU IN 






TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON, 



APRIL 19th, 1865, 



BY WENDELL PHILLIPS 




WORCESTER: 
PRINTED BY CHAS. HAMILTON, 

PALLADIUM OFFICE. 



A D D E E S S. 



These are sober days. The judgments of God have found us out. 
Years gone by chastised us with whips — these chastise us with scorpions. 
Thirty years ago, how strong our mountain stood, laughing prosperity on 
all its sides ! None heeded the fire and gloom which slumbered below. 
It was nothing that a giant sin gagged our pulpits ; that its mobs ruled 
our cities, burnt men at the stake for their opinions, and hunted them 
like wild beasts for their humanity. It was nothing that, in the lonely 
quiet of the plantation, there fell on the unpitied person of the slave 
every torture which hellish ingenuity could devise. It was nothing that 
as husband and father, mother and child, the negro drained to its dregs 
all the bitterness which could be pressed into his cup ; that, torn with 
whip and dogs, starved, hunted, tortured, racked, he cried : " How long ! 
oh Lord, how long !" In vain did a thousand witnesses crowd our high- 
ways, telling to the world the horrors of this prison-house. None stopped 
to consider, none believed. Trade turned away its deaf ear — the Church 
gazed on them with stony brow — Letters passed by with mocking tongue. 
But what the world would not look at, God has set to-day in a light so 
ghastly bright, that it almost dazzles us blind. What the world refused 
to believe, God has written all over the face of the continent, with the 
sword's point, in the blood of our best and most beloved. We believe 
the agony of the slave's hovel, the mother and the husband, when it takes 
its seat at our board. We realize the barbarism that crushed him in the 
sickening and brutal use of the relics of Bull Run, in the massacre at 
Fort Pillow, in the torture and starvation of Libby Prison, where idiocy 
was mercy, and death God's best blessing ; and now bitterly we realize it 
in the coward spite which strikes an unarmed man, unwarned, behind his 



back ; in the assassin fingers which dabble with bloody knife at the throats 
of old men on sick pillows. Oh, God ! let this lesson be enough ! Spare 
us any more such costly teaching ! 

This deed is but the result and fair representative of the system in 
whose defence it was done. No matter whether it was previously ap- 
proved at Richmond, or whether the assassin, if he reaches the confeder- 
ates, be received with all honor, as the wretch Brooks was, and as this 
bloodier wretch will surely be, wherever rebels are not dumb with fear of 
our cannon. No matter for all this. God shows this terrible act to 
teach the nation, in. unmistakable terms, the terrible foe with which it has 
to deal. But for this fietidish spirit. North and South, which holds up 
the rebellion, the assassin had never either wished or dared such a deed. 
This lurid flash only shows us how black and wide the cloud from which 
it sprung. 

And what of him in whose precious blood this momentous lesson is 
writ ? He sleeps in the blessings of the poor, whose fetters God com- 
missioned him to break. Give prayers and tears to the desolate widow 
and the fatherless, but count him blessed far above the crowd of his fellow- 
men. (Fervent cries of *' Amen !") He was permitted himself to deal 
the last staggering blow which sent rebellion reeling to its grave ; and 
then, holding his darling boy by the hand, to walk the streets of its sur- 
rendered capital, while his ears drank in praise and thanksgiving which 
bore his name to the throne of God in every form piety and gratitude 
could invent, and finally to seal the sure triumph of the cause he loved 
with his own blood. He caught the first notes of the coming jubilee, and 
heard his own name in every one. Who among living men may not envy 
him ? Suppose that when, a boy, he floated on the slow current of the 
Mississippi, idly gazing at the slave upon its banks, some angel had lifted 
the curtain and shown him that in the prime of his manhood he should 
see this proud empire rocked to its foundation in the eff'ort to break those 
chains, should himself marshal the hosts of the Almighty in the grandest 
and holiest war that Christendom ever knew, and deal, with half-reluctant 
hand, that thunderbolt of justice which would smite the foul system to the 
(Just — then die, leaving a name immortal in the sturdy pride of one race 
and the undying gratitude of another — would any credulity, however san- 
guine, any enthusiasm, however fervid, have enabled him to believe it ? 
Fortunate man ! He has lived to do it ! (Applause.) God has gra- 



ciously withheld hira from any fatal mis-step in the great advance, and 
withdrawn him at the moment when his star touched its zenith, and the 
nation needed a sterner hand for the work God gives it to do. 

No matter, now, that, unable to lead and form the nation, he was con- 
tented to be only its representative and mouthpiece; no matter that, 
with prejudices hanging about hira, he groped his way very slowly and 
sometimes reluctantly forward ; let us remember how patient he was of 
contradiction, how little obstinate in opinion, how willing, like Lord Ba- 
con, "to light his torch at every man's candle." With the least possible 
personal hatred, with too little sectional bitterness, often forgetting jus- 
tice in mercy, tender-hearted to any misery his own eyes saw, and in any 
deed which needed his actual sanction, if his sympathy had limits, recol- 
lect he was human, was more honest than his fellows, and with a truth to 
his own convictions such as few politicians achieve. With all his short- 
comings, we point proudly to hira as the natural growth of democratic in- 
stitutions. [Applause.] Coming time will put him in that galaxy of 
Americans which makes our history the day-star of the nations, — Wash- 
ington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson and Jay. History will add his 
name to the bright list, with a more loving claim on our gratitude than 
either of them. No one of those was called to die for his cause. For 
him, when the nation needed to be raised to its last dread duty, we were 
prepared for it by the baptism of his blood. 

What shall we say as to the punishment of rebels ? The air is thick 
with threats of vengeance. I admire the motive which prompts these. 
But let us remember that no cause, however infamous, was ever crushed 
by punishing its advocates and abettors. All history proves this. There 
is no class of men base and coward enough, no matter what their views 
and purpose, to make the policy of vengeance successful. In bad causes, 
as well as good, it is still true that " the blood of the martyrs is the seed 
of the Church." We cannot prevail against this principle of human na- 
ture. And again, with regard to the dozen chief rebels, it will never be 
a practical question whether we shall hang them. Those not now in Eu- 
rope will soon be there. Indeed, after paroling the bloodiest and guilti- 
est of all, Robert Lee, [loud applause,] there would be little fitness in 
hanging any lesser wretch. 

The only punishment which ever crushes a cause is that which its lead- 
ers necessarily suffer in consequence of the new order of things made 
necessary to prevent the recurrence of their sin. It was not the blood of 



two peers and thirty commoners which England shed after the Rebellion 
of 1715, or that of five peers and twenty commoners shed after the rising 
of 1 745, which crushed the House of Stuart. Though the fight had lasted 
only a few months, those blocks and gibbets gave Charles his only chance 
to recover. But the confiscated lands of his adherents, and the new 
political arrangement of the Highlands, — ^just, and recognized as such, 
because necessary, — these quenched his star forever. 

Our rebellion has lasted four years. Government has exchanged pris- 
oners and acknowledged its belligerent rights. After that, gibbets are 
out of the question. A thousand men rule the rebellion, — are the rebel- 
lion. A thousand men. We cannot hang them all. We cannot hang 
men in regiments. What ! cover the continent with gibbets ! We can- 
not sicken the 19th century with such a sight. It would sink our civili- 
zation to the level of Southern barbarism. It would forfeit our very right 
to supersede the Southern system, which right is based on ours being 
better than theirs. To make its corner-stone the gibbet would degrade 
us to the level of Bixy'is and Lee. The structure of Government which 
bore the earthquake shock of 1861 with hardly a jar, and which now bears 
the assassination of its Chief Magistrate, in this crisis of civil war, with 
even less disturbance, needs, for its safety, no such policy of vengeance ; 
its serene strength needs and should use only so much severity as will 
fully guarantee security for the future. 

Banish every one of these thousand rebel leaders — every one of them, 
on pain of death if they ever return ! [Loud applause.] Confiscate 
every dollar and acre they own. [Applause.] These steps the world 
and their followers will see are necessary to kill the seeds of caste, dan- 
gerous State rights and secession. [Applause.] Banish Lee with the 
rest. [Applause ] No government should ask of the South which he 
has wasted, or of the North which he has murdered, such superabundant 
Christian patience a,s to tolerate in our streets the presence of a wretch 
-whose hand upheld Libby Prison and Andersonville, and whose soul is 
black with sixty-four thousand deaths of prisoners by starvation and tor- 
ture. 

What of our new President ? His whole life is a pledge that he knows 
and hates thoroughly that caste which is the Gibraltar of secession. 
Caste, mailed in State rights^ seized slavery as its weapon to smite down 
the Union. Said Jackson in 1833, " Slavery will be the next pretext for 
rebellion." PBEXJixi ! That pretext and weapon we wrench from rebel 



hands the moment we pass the anti-slavery amendment to the Constitu- 
tion. Now kill Caste, the foe who wields it. Andy Johnson is our nat- 
ural leader for this. His life has been pledged to it. He put on his 
spurs with this vow of knighthood. He sees that confiscation, land placed 
in the hands of the masses, is the means to kill this foe. 

Land and the ballot are the true foundations of all governments. In- 
trust them, wherever loyalty exists, to all those, black and white, who 
have upheld the flag. [Applause.] Reconstruct no State without giving 
to every loyal man in it the ballot. I scout all limitations of knowledge, 
property or race. [Applause.] Universal suffrage for me. That was 
the Revolutionary model. Except where, in some instances, a property 
qualification was required, every freeman voted, black or white, whether 
he could read or not. My rule is, any citizen liable to be hanged for 
crime is entitled to vote for rulers. The ballot insures the school. 

Mr. Johnson has not yet uttered a word which shows that he sees the 
need of negro suffrage to guarantee the Union. The best thing he has 
said on this point, showing a mind open to light, is thus reported by one 
of the most intelligent men in the country — the Baltimore correspondent 
of the Boston Commonwealth : — 

" The Vice-President was holding forth very eloquently in front of 
Admiral Lee's dwelling, just in front of the War Oifice in Washington. 
He said he was willing to send every negro in the country to Africa, to 
save the Union. Nay, he was willing to cut Africa loose from Asia, and 
sink the whole black race ten thousand fathoms deep to effect this object. 
A loud voice sang out in the crowd, ' Let the negro stay where he is, 
Governor, and give him the ballot, and the Union will be safe forever !' 
' And 1 am ready to do that too !' [loud applause,] shouted the Governor 
with intense energy, whereat he got three times three for the noble sen- 
timent. I witnessed this scene, and was pleased to hear our Vice-Presi- 
dent take this high ground ; for up to this point must the nation quickly 
advance, or there will be no peace, no rest, no prosperity, no blessing, 
for our suffering and distracted country." 

The need of giving the negro a ballot is what we must press upon the 
President's attention. Beware the mistake which fastened McClellan up- 
on us — running too fast to indorse a man while untried — determined to 
believe him hero and leader at any rate. The President tells us that he 
waits to announce his policy till events call for it. A timely and states- 
manlike course. Let us imitate it. Assure him in return that the gov- 
ernment shall have our support like good citizens. But remind him that 



8 . 

we will tell him what we think of his policy when' we learn what it is. 
He says, " Wait — I shall punish ; I shall confiscate ; what more I shall 
do, you will know when I da it." 

Let us reply : " Good ! So far good ! Banish the rebels. See to it 
also that, before you admit a single State to the Union, you oblige it to 
give every loyal man in it the ballot, — the ballot, which secures educa- 
tion, — the ballot, which begets character where it lodges responsibility — 
the ballot, having which, no class need fear injustice or contempt — the 
ballot, which puts the helm of the Union into the hands of those who love 
and have upheld it. Land — where every man's title deed, based on cq»- 
fiscation, is the bond which ties his interest to the Union ; ballot — the . 
weapon which enables him to defend his property and the Union ; — these 
are the motives for the white man — the negro needs no motive but his in- 
stinct and heart. Give him the bullet and the ballot— he needs them — 
and, while he holds them, the Union is safe." 

To reconstruct now, without giving the negro the suffrage, would be a 
greater blunder, and, considering our better light, a greater sin than our 
fathers committed in 1789, in their compromise with slavery; and we 
should have no right to expect from such reconstruction any less disas- 
trous results. 

This is the lesson God teaches us in the blood of Lincoln. Like 
Egypt, we are made to read our lesson in the blood of our first-born, and 
the seats of our princes left empty. We bury all false magnanimity in 
this fresh grave, writing over it the maxim of the coming four years — 
•' Treason is the greatest of crimes, and not a mere difference of opin- 
ion." That is the motto of our leader to-day. That is the warning this 
atrocious crime sounds throughout the land. Let us heed it, and need 
no more such costly teaching. [Loud applause.] 



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